


you can't wake up, this is not a dream

by x (ordinary)



Series: Persona 4 Ficlets [5]
Category: Persona 4
Genre: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Branding, Character Death, Cults, Gunplay, M/M, Murder, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Stalking, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-06
Updated: 2015-09-06
Packaged: 2018-04-19 07:53:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4738559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ordinary/pseuds/x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They send him to Inaba to keep him out of danger, but what they don’t think to know is that danger doesn’t come in one size, fits all. They send him to Inaba but the cults run deep, threading their way through every city and province, in every shrine and gas station, in the hallways of every school. They send him to Inaba but the blood of innocents runs red no matter where you go.</p><p>They send him to Inaba and he doesn’t come back.</p><p> </p><p>Or, at least, he doesn't come back the <i>same</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you can't wake up, this is not a dream

**Author's Note:**

> well i didn't ask for this but this is what i got. enjoy! and heed the tags!

They send him to Inaba to keep him out of danger, but what they don’t think to know is that danger doesn’t come in one size, fits all. They send him to Inaba but the cults run deep, threading their way through every city and province, in every shrine and gas station, in the hallways of every school. They send him to Inaba but the blood of innocents runs red no matter where you go.

They send him to Inaba and he doesn’t come back.

Or, at least, he doesn't come back the  _same._

_\--_

In the end,  he doesn’t have to wait long for it to find him at all. Danger finds him on the first day, in fact.

(Day zero, dawn of the first, a count down to nothing and a count up to oblivion. It’s all the same to a nihilist, and Yu is just that in all but name.)

With cold eyes and a smile, she greets him with a handshake both firm and dry, gloved fingers tight around his own. We all have our part to play, she says, a cryptic whisper on the wind, forlorn and foreboding all at once. He shakes his head and asks her to repeat that, a headache from his two hours of sleep and exhaustion catching up to him after a long day of travel. His temples pulse a staccato drum beat, exacting a cruel pressure behind his eyes.

She pulls back and waves, stepping out his space right as Dojima steps back into it. She slides her eyes askew and smiles a secret smile. “Have a good day, sir.”

Yu climbs back in the car and forgets her name (already) and her face (already), thinking to the wide blue sky of his future instead.

Clouds gather in the distance, like cobwebs in the corner, accumulating slowly.

\--

She waits for him on the roof of Junes. He doesn’t know how he got here, but Yu edges closer all the same. The wind whips to life around them, lifting her grey curls just-so, and they shine luminous under the waxing moon.

“Life is just hopeless, isn't it?” she asks, voice swallowed by the sound of itself, the picture of her face distorted as if in a dream.

“No,” he says, but it’s reflex. “You know that isn’t true.” But maybe she doesn’t. Yu doesn’t know her at all; doesn’t even know her name.

She’s balanced on the precipice, fingers wound around the fencing protecting her from the fall-- but she’s on the wrong side. Is she going to jump, he wonders, and swallows the thrill that rises up at the thought of prying her fingers off one by one.

But she’s talking. “What do you live for, then?” the gas station attendant asks, lips turned up into a sneer. They’re chapped. “There’s nothing left for me here.”

Yu could say anything. About friendship, about bonds forged strong enough to endure the test of time. About hope, and how innate it is to the human condition. But instead, his lips twist upwards, too.

“Is this your way of asking for an easy way out?” he asks, curiosity filtering into his voice. ”Are you asking for a damnation, or a benediction?”

She laughs, and he notices that at the base of her neck, there is an insignia burnt into her skin. A brand. “The choice is yours, then.” There are tears in her eyes. (There’s a contract to complete. A promise to keep. A prophecy to fulfil. Bound by blood, bound by everything.)

“You know what you are,” he says, finally, putting his hands in his pockets. He should phone the police. He should talk her down. He should reach out to pull her back and tell her everything is going to be okay.

Instead, Yu leans over the railing to look down, taking in the sight of the empty street below. They’re up high enough to kill her, if she wants to jump for real.

“Where do you  _think_  you belong?”

Her throat bobs. “I don’t know.” She’s a liar. Has been from the beginning. He can tell because it takes one to know one.

“Yes you do,” he says, calmly, with silver eyes that remain dead under the light of the moon. “It’s easy. All you have to do is let go, and you’ll be out of whatever trap you’ve been stuck in for all these years.”

With a gloved hand, he reaches out to touch the brand, waiting to feel her pulse roaring under the attendant’s cold, clammy skin. And she snarls, then, like a jackal snapping its jaws, devolving into hysterical laughter.

“I don’t want to die!” She howls it, wishing that he’d stuck to the expected script, to how it was supposed to be, “ _but I don’t have a choice_.”

“You always have a choice,” Yu replies kindly, calm even as spittle hits his cheek, and he wipes it clean with a mild look of disdain. “Until it’s taken away from you.”

And then he plants a firm, gloved hand against her back, squarely between her shoulder-blades, and  _pushes_.

 

\--

Adachi watches him with an interest too intent to be casual and too cold to be lust. Yu treats him as any nephew would his uncle's partner: with respect, with politeness, with quiet curiosity.

He hates it, and Yu's smile grows wider, from introduction to Junes interactions to the invasion of Dojima-san's home, as if he could assert his dominance by presence alone.

In the dim of the night, with the tv turned to static, Adachi watches Yu work in the kitchen, doing the last of the dishes and clearing the last of the beer bottles, and he  _plans_.

\--

The cults run deep and it's in his  _blood_ , because all it takes is one. Just one, and Yu's thirst is awakened.

Someone _bothers_ Yukiko-chan and seems more strange than threatening, but his suspicions are high and his desire to protect his friends overrules his fading logic. (Emphasis on the his.  _Possessions_ to be coveted, to be protected, links to be used and no one else's.) Learning his details are easy enough; his name is Mitsuo Kubo, he worked part time at the food stand for a time, he's always been a weird loner, and he obsesses over **whatever** his topic of interest is.

It's clear that it's Yukiko-chan. 

Sometimes he's in the North Shopping District, and Yu talks to him once or twice to be polite, but he mutters to himself about  _she'll learn_ and  _how dare_ , and Yu has to resist snapping his teeth like the attendant had, terrified and full of fury.

No, there's no leaving his fate to chance. There's no reporting it to the police either, even if Dojima-san that night offers him a cup of coffee and asks what's wrong in that eggshell way he does, when he's not sure how to fix whatever it is that's troubling his nephew. (Besides: Yu deflects it kindly, because it's none of his uncle's concern at all. He talks about school and women and responsibilities, he talks about Nanako-chan's drawings and how he tutors a student part time, and by the end of it Dojima-san has forgotten his concerns entirely.) 

It's how he said to the attendant: You always have a choice, and it was time for Yu to make his.

\--

A quiet _click_ and the safety is off, and Yu doesn’t have to look to know that Adachi has his finger on the trigger. It runs along his jaw, cold metal against feverish skin.

“You know, kid,” he says, his voice thick and dangerous, both poison and honey. “I think someone needs to teach you a _lesson_.”

Yu’s heart hammers in his chest, fear intermingling with adrenaline as the cold barrel slides against the side of his neck, caressing him like a lover might. 

"I don't understand, Adachi-san," Yu says in protest, jolting away to hold his hands up in defeat and in protest both, as if the weak flesh of a palm might stop a bullet. As if the act of innocence might change his mind. "What did I do?"

Adachi laughs, pulling the gun away to rub at non-existent tears of mirth at the corner of his eye. "I'm sorry, but, really. Do you expect me to believe that shit? Do you think you're  _invisible_?"

 

He bites his cheek so hard that copper falls on his tongue, because Adachi-san can't  _know_. "I- I don't know what you mean." The honorific is dropped. The stakes are rising.

"I think you do, kid." Adachi taps the gun against Yu's temple, clucking his tongue. "There's only room for  _one_ of us around here. Do you know how hard it is to get away with it as it is? Tch. Of course not. You wouldn't understand, you're just some irresponsible _punk_."

The picture, then, comes into startling clarity. 

\--

When night falls, Yu walks to the house where he knows Mitsuo Kubo sleeps.

He's learned that it's a little out of his way, most days, but if he walks to _Chie's_ , well then, it's just on the way.

Yu had passed by the house a few times before he could pick it out: second from the corner, the patio in the backyard in disarray. He's seen Mitsuo going in and out with that tired look in his eyes, has overheard him telling his parents that he'll mind the house while they're gone.

A new wave of excitement washes over him like the sun's rays, and the truth is that this is more of an excuse than any sort of vigilantism. Yu knows that, and it doesn't diminish his anticipation at all.

Maybe it should.

Normal people didn't do these sorts of things.

All the same, Yu approaches the front door, leaning in close to jiggle the lock. He can hear his own heart beating, and when the lock gives in to the lockpicks, Yu gently slides into the silent house. No alarms, of course. Apartments in the city would be rigged to the gills, but no one in this backwater town had any concept of security. Not _really_. 

He creeps towards the kitchen and from the block selects a single knife, large and hefty. He'd worn a new pair of gloves on his hands to conceal his prints, his hair tucked beneath a black hat. 

Quiet as a mouse, Yu slinks towards Mitsuo's room, the one at the back of the house, where he'd seen him hunched over a computer more than once, his window open only the barest sliver. It was enough.

He makes it look like an accident, arcing the blood away from himself, the jugular severed and knife in hand.

\--

" _Idiot_ ," Adachi sneers, muzzle pressed to Yu's cheek. "I had to lose some evidence because of you. The last thing I need is the  _police_  looking too close into any  _unusual deaths_."  _  
_

Yu sucks in a breath between his teeth, heart sinking. "What was it?" he asks, polite, too tense to be casual. He's caught out. Adachi has him in his clutches. "I'd hate to die not knowing, senpai."

He gets a shove in return. " _Hair_. One strand. You're just lucky I saw it before anyone else. Now," Adachi says, and pistol-whips Yu without blinking, "we have _two options_. I can kill you now, after you write a suicide note in your own words."

Adachi loosens his tie, and Yu can't help but stare at the base of his neck. He knows that sign.

"Or you can be my  _accomplice_."

This is tiring. Adachi looks at Yu like he's won the game, smug and self-grandiose, and it's no  _wonder_ that he didn't want any competition. He's too afraid of being outdone. He expects Yu to feel the same.

But there's so much to  _learn._

" _Your_ accomplice, Adachi-san?" Yu asks, and his mouth, now bleeding and cherry bright, red between his teeth, stretches into a feral grin. Adachi's eyes glitter amber under the yellow light bulb gently swaying above them, the lines in his body drawn taut like a bowstring. He  wants to ruin Yu but he doesn't know what he's in for. Yu licks blood off his canines and leans forward. 

You always have a choice, and this is theirs. 

"Of course I'll be your accomplice, Adachi-san. There was no need for all _this_." 

Yu tugs on Adachi's tie, and it's pouring gasoline on an open flame, setting them both ablaze. He kisses Adachi with the intent to consume, and he's met with the same. The gun slides to press between his ribs, and Adachi is all the harder for it. Admittedly, Yu is too, especially because he has no intention of stopping. 

Not when danger waits at every death at his own hands, not when Adachi etches the sigil into the space between Yu's collarbones and seals it with heat, not when Yu knows that there's  _more_ for him, waiting at the fringes of Inaba. Izanami calls, and he's too curious not to follow.

**Author's Note:**

> \- there's a cult spread through all of inaba, waiting for a chosen one  
> \- yu is this chosen one.  
> \- he goads someone into suicide, although the thing ensuring that she does kill herself is the cult more than yu.  
> \- yu starts to stalk/kill others under the guise of vigilantism, but it's weak, even to him.  
> \- adachi, another killer in the area, gets pissed that yu is in his territory.
> 
> i make no defense/excuse for the behavior presented; these characters are written was Bad People, who do Bad Things with no remorse.


End file.
